Half of Denver’s longest-lasting TV anchor team signs off today as Libby Weaver ends her tenure at KDVR and, most likely, in broadcasting. Her co=anchor Ron Zappolo is preparing to exit the anchor chair in March. He’s stated his intention to do sportscasting; nothing has been finalized.

Weaver and Zappolo, an on-air team since the station’s news department launched in 2000, clicked from the beginning and have been trading easy ad libs ever since. (When they’ve verged on too-cute, there’s always been BBC World News on Channel 6 for balance.) Weaver has said she’s not retiring, just seeking a change. Would the station have extended her contract? It never got that far.

“It was her decision,” Fox31 news director Ed Kosowski said. “She made it clear that while she loved her job, this was a personal choice, she wanted to be a full-time mom.” The plan for her farewell is cake and champagne in the newsroom this afternoon, an on-air tribute at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., and an in-studio appearance by her husband and kids at 9 p.m.

No decision yet on a replacement, but Deborah Takahara will be “at least” the interim co-anchor with Zappolo. She’s the obvious candidate to get the job permanently, while Jeremy Hubbard has long been the station’s pick to succeed Zappolo.

She calls it “perfect timing.” With three kids at home (13, 10 and 8) and a co-anchor set to retire in March 2013, Fox31’s Libby Weaver will end her run as half of Denver’s longest-lasting late news anchor team “at the top of my game and on my terms.”

Her last day will be Dec. 13.

The down-to-earth anchor, 45, spoke frankly about her decision, which the station confirmed this week. The conflicting demands of being a mother and newscaster have created angst, she said, culminating in an “epiphany” some eight months ago when two of her kids were in tears, desperate for homework help, and she was running out the door after a hasty dinner to go back to work. “I thought, “what am I doing?””

“You cannot do it all,” she concluded. “I think I surprised them (KDVR management)” when she broke the news.

Libby Weaver, co-anchor at KDVR-Fox31 for almost 13 years, will leave the station at the end of the year or early in 2013.

Weaver has been half of the longest-lasting late news anchor team in Denver TV, along with Ron Zappolo, who previously announced his intention to step down.

Weaver who teamed for the 5 and 9 p.m. newscasts with veteran Denver anchor Zappolo, and has recently been co-anchor with Jeremy Hubbard on the early evening and late night newscasts, was not available for comment Tuesday. The station confirmed her departure without specifying the reason.

“We can confirm that Libby Weaver will be leaving KDVR sometime around the end of this year or early in January,” according to News Director Ed Kosowski. “Beyond that we cannot and will not discuss anything else at this time about Libby’s departure except to say that we will certainly miss her presence both on the air in our newscasts and in the newsroom.”

Peter Maroney, recently installed as president and general manager of the combined KDVR and KWGN, is an old-school broadcaster who came up through the news ranks of respected mainstream stations–not the sales side. He didn’t watch Fox or the CW before being named to this post by the owners of Channel 2 and Channel 31, a group called Local TV. Now he’s loving “Glee.”

Still new in the job, he knows where he stands: the brand name “The Deuce” is done. It was a bad idea from the start, he says. Audience research will help come up with a new handle for Channel 2.

He would have nixed the idea of anchorwomen Libby Weaver and Natalie Tisdale posing for a magazine cover in provocative attire. A no- brainer.

And he’s been sent here to oversee content, specifically to help as the industry makes the shift into “the three-screen world.” Coming soon: “The horizon is open for mobile TV,” he said. He sees the iPad as an exciting component of this change.

For a guy who delivered on-air editorials criticizing Richard Nixon as a morning TV anchor in Houston as a pimply 21-year-old, he’s quite at home talking about the high-tech future of the medium. After years in the business at stations in Richmond, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Boston, Maroney says the move to Denver and the Fox/CW affiliates has “energized my career.”

He sees the local battle for No. 2 late newscast as a top priority. In San Francisco and Portland, he notes, Fox is No. 1. Why shouldn’t Channel 31 be the most profitable station in town? he asks. Unlike his competitors, who share more national advertising revenue with their networks, “We have a ton of (local) inventory.”

It’s a sign of the churn in the broadcast news business that Ron Zappolo and Libby Weaver at Fox Channel 31 are the currently longest-lasting late news anchor team in Denver. They’ve been sharing the anchor desk since 2000.

In the intervening years, Ed Sardella and Bill Stuart retired from Channel 9 and Channel 4, respectively, and Jim Benemann jumped from Channel 9 to Channel 4, all creating on-air change. Of course Ernie Bjorkman is no slouch in the longevity department at Channel 2. But Zap

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and Weaver are the longest tenured current team.

In the old days, anchor teams lasted for 16 years if they were as lucky and good as Sardella/Mike Landess. Nowadays, eight years is a good run.

Which makes it extra noteworthy that Zappolo just signed a new contract with Fox 31, (a deal approved by the incoming management, pending FCC approval) and keeping him there for what the 56-year-old anchor says is likely the rest of his career.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.